


Burn Bright

by ForestUnderwater



Category: Banana Bus Squad
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Music, POV Second Person, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 23:12:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6774115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestUnderwater/pseuds/ForestUnderwater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Los Santos was dead and Delirious was the one that knew it the best without being able to find a way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Bright

**Author's Note:**

> *Wired writing style.  
> *It is my very first time to translate my work into English. Hope there should be somebody pointing out the mistakes I made.  
> *Hope it should be you. :)  
> *Check out the original Chinese version. (Link is below) (Via: Lofter)  
> *The Lofter above should be no longer available for some private reasons.

ORIGINAL CHINESE VERSION: [CLICK HERE.](http://deforrest.lofter.com/post/1d907947_ace24de)

 

It was at night when you were sitting by the edge of a skyscraper, with darkness slightly waving at the bottom of your icy blues. And you were thinking--you raised your hands in the empty air, as if searching and locating. At that very moment were you dismally thinking, with some kind of faint pain holding in your chest, you almost murmured to yourself:

This city is dead.

You tossed about these phrases. From your sight, the city was asleep in some warm, orange, tender and corrupted kind of lights like it was bathing in fire. The flames, as they sprout and stretched, spread all the way down from underneath your feet. You couldn’t tell whether it was you that set the fire or it was the city that lit itself. You’d been living in the city as a child and grew up in it, yet it had never been so strange to you.

Led by your feet, you walked along the road that you saw the flames burn through. Eventually you got lost in the lights. Your footprints overlapped with thousands of others, they precisely coincided, and that was when the sparks dropped besides your feet, and, in the lights given off by the flames, it seemed as if a whole new world was being brewed. You were barely watching, not knowing you were feeling whether upset or cheered. This city, famous for its booming economy, promising tourism, horrible gap of wealth and a damn high incidence of crimes at the same time, is always doing shady shits aboveboard. You let out a laugh. You were supposed to be the one who knows way more better than everyone else.

You know better than them. But what next?

You wanted to rub your temples. Sharp ache kept coming from the joints of your body which had already been suffering a lot from a lack of sleep for days. But finally your finger only knocked on a piece of cold resin. Yes it had been a fucking long time already, but, sometimes when you get deeply lost in mind, you still forget that you are wearing a mask. And when the fact finally came into your head again, things always seemed to be so ridiculous.

You did like the feeling of wearing a mask on your face. Left out the so-called “a sense of security”, you really liked to see peoples’ faces when they got to see yours--how you gonna describe that expression? Frightened? Or disgusted? The fact was, ridiculously, that everyone had, more or less, masks on their faces, and you were just the one who shouted that out loud. Thus people called you “The Clown”, they were afraid of you, they claimed that you were a cold-blooded murder machine that was the closest one to be like demons, like you’d revealed their buried secrets. But, in other words, what was the difference that you had admitted having your mask? Behind the mask were there still another mask, and another mask anyway. You recalled yourself painting a clown out of you the very first time. You could still memorize most of the details, they were haunting you just like what those ghosts that gradually increased in all these fucking years had always been doing.

Delirious. Delirious.

The continuous phonism was torturing your eardrums. You hardly forget things, except that you could not remember how you started naming yourself like that. However, you didn’t care. You don’t fucking care. Who doesn’t have his stories, after all? You cast a glance into those gloomy alleys you passed by, watching some girls selling their nights, some drug addicts begging for cocaine, some gangsters selling ammunition. Whatever you saw, whatever you were gonna see, you took them without questioning. Just like all the tasks you’d accepted before, whether they were dirty or bloody or despicable, you took them. Your mask smiled for you, your gloves took those money for you, as well as the pills that helped you get through those empty nights......

Your hand in the pocket gently rubbed on that tiny class bottle. The pair of lips underneath your mask couldn’t even form a proper curve.

“Hey Delirious.”

That call actually sounded real. You turned around, facing the direction where the the call came from. You saw your friend, with his two hands in his pockets, walking towards you through the lights of the fire you assumed existing. Unlike you, he was always the same inside and out which make him an annoying asshole. A light brown jacket was casually wrapping around him. You looked into his eyes which had the same color as his clothes. You didn’t speak.

“So, you in?”

You narrowed your eyes. Of course you got Cartoonz’s idea. You were not unprepared. Delirious was always a blade ready for kills, that was one of the most well-known facts in the city. Your fingers rested on the outer edge of the bottle. The tactile sensation of glass was cold but comfortably soft. You spent great effort to convince yourself not to open it.

“You know I won’t refuse that,” you laughed. Unlike the way you used to do, the laughter sounded low and gentle. You re-adjusted the mask, quietly poked a finger to massage on your temples, “tell me when and where.”

Cartoonz took a deep glance at you but you didn’t see it, thus not noticing the worries in his eyes. All that you heard was him telling you the information of your next task. And then, following after a short pause, you heard him again saying, “Man are you okay?”

You paused. With a click by your finger, you pulled your mask up over your eyebrows. And then you raised your eyebrows at him, a haughty, delirious smile sprout on your face, “what stupid shit are you talking ‘bout?” You stared into those eyes of your friend, and by thinking for a short time, you closed your eyes like you’d compromised. You asked unconcernedly, “Hey dude, do you remember the center park we used to visit when we’re younger?”

“Yes, what do you need?” Cartoonz almost responded immediately. You were slightly touched. After all these years he was still being such a warm-hearted bastard.

“I forgot the way there.” You said, feeling a sense of loss. As the city was gradually burning to death, you, in a similar way, had also been stumbling to then. These night lights, of the city, the stars or the moon, penetrating through clouds and buildings, they together with all the roads you’d traveled cauterized your body, inside out. Sudden curiosity arose that whether you wear the mask in order to hide the scorched vulnerable flesh, keeping it from being exposed to open air. The inference sounded even more than convincing, so convincing that it was almost ridiculous. You couldn’t help but chuckled, which followed by a cursed to yourself. You asked in slight guilty, “do you remember?”

Cartoonz seemed to be puzzled, still he nodded at you after thinking for a moment, “yes I do, but ‘m not sure if it’s still there. You know, shits have been tearing down in recent years.”

You nodded without further comments. Of course you knew that things are always changing, of course you did not really forget the way to that fucking park. Sometimes when you were in a wrong mood searching for some old reflections, you went back visiting. As a result you watched the park die and be torn away with the very same eyes that witness the death of this city itself. Maybe it was because that the process of this was slow and blurry, it took you so long before you stared at the ruin of the park and finally realized that there was something in your heart left in the past with it. As for what exactly “something” was, your subconsciousness refused to delve into it, so did you.

“What, wanna go back for a visit?”

Cartoonz asked. You didn’t expect the question, thus unable to figure a way to react. He really did see through you. He didn’t get anxious, nor did he ask other questions. All that he said later was simply “call me when you really want a walk there” and then he went for another topic. After a few words he told you he was about to go, as he often did, as you actually wish. You didn’t know if you should be shamed or grateful. You just watched as he turned and got back after several steps only to give you a hug--exactly the same thing you used to do to him.

As a matter of fact this was no special circumstance, less special than when you were assigned to a fatal task at least. But your friend was showing you his concern. Though it might be a little bit awkward or silly, you felt warmth forming through your lung rushing all the way to your nose. You smiled. Your lips together with the red paint of a clown almost stretched to your earlobes. You were suddenly thinking of all the people you’d met, all the situations you’d been in, inspiring or desperate. They dragged you deep into hell trying to temper you, trying to build you to be as cold-hearted and undefeatable as a machine--but you, like a goddamn paranoid, never thought that you were over. You never thought that you would ever die together with this city, nor did you allow your friends being killed in any ways people could think of, though, the funny thing was, that you were considered to be the one who were always walking on the dark side of the city.

“Cartoonz...... This city is dead.”

You mumbled as you hugged him. Yet obviously your friend didn’t hear this because he let you go before you finished the sentence. The hug was brief but comforting. You smiled at him, covered your face with your mask again. The resin sliced an invisible cut on your fingertips, perfectly attached to the line of your profile.

This city was about to die.

But you were not.

“Cartoonz, remember Jaguar?”

“Jaguar?” Cartoonz hesitated for a second. You were simply smiling and waiting for his words to come out, “yes I remember. Dude, don’t you tell me that you’re gonna......”

“I’m gonna fucking destroy him, yeah,” you said, with laughter you often made in your voice. Restlessness and calm were both swaying in your piercing blues, “one day or another. So,” you chuckled, “don’t forget to tell me when you get his news.”

You waited until Cartoonz closed his eyes, sighed deeply and nodded, “OK I will.”

Great. You turned your head to look at the top of the Federal Bank Tower which was still visible in a long distance because of its terrifying height. The waxing moon was silently hanging besides this tallest building in Los Santos, stretching bleak light across the sky and earth. Pale bellow the clouds, vast and still above. This IS a fucking ugly world......ugly city, ugly people and an ugly you. You knew it better than everyone, you hated it more than them, too. So there was no need to bring this world another cause for desperation. You keep dismally thinking, and thinking, like there would never be an end. Your hand touched a dagger you always carried with you. You remembered of all the bodies lying down near your feet. You felt thrill climbing up from your toes to your back.

You laughed. The tiny dagger cut your finger, but you seemed to be not aware of it. You simply pulled the wounded hand out of the pocket and watched woodenly as the blood wet the floor. If this was you, if this was your city, then fuck it. Just let people scare. Just let them tremble. This city would catch some people to die with it anyway, you didn’t care if it catches more, nor did you care if it fucking chooses you. The only prerequisite was, the fire must keep burning, all the way to the depth of the city, all the way to its very core, to vanish your past and provide you with the future you’d been searching for--if such future dose exist.

You pulled out your cellphone and clicked the “send” button for a message you’d already finished some time before. Darkness fulfilled your eyes. Your mask was smiling for you.

Fuck the world.

 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Poof. It’s been a long time for me to finish this and it was a tiring job assigned by myself.  
> Seriously I did not and I don’t know what I was trying to write. Words keep hovering in my head. The only choice I made was to share it to you.  
> Inspirations came from my dream and one song I’ve been listening to since long ago and it is Burn Bright by My Chemical Romance. Obviously where the title came from, yes.  
> I’ve been following BBS for some time and I really like these guys, though there were only two of them involved in this part.  
> Seriously all I’ve been looking forward to do is to thank them. To thank him. In any ways.  
> In case that you find my article hard to understand I must tell you that I’m so sorry. I’m not a native English speaker, English has always been a challenge for me, but I’ll work and try harder each time, every time. If you can point out those mistakes in my article for me, I can’t thank you too much for that.  
> Hope you like my work. 0v0


End file.
